{"id":76004,"date":"2018-03-27T15:55:21","date_gmt":"2018-03-27T22:55:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=76004"},"modified":"2018-03-27T15:55:21","modified_gmt":"2018-03-27T22:55:21","slug":"restore-fertilizers-and-lift-the-ban-on-the-pesticides-glyphosate-and-paraquat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2018\/03\/27\/restore-fertilizers-and-lift-the-ban-on-the-pesticides-glyphosate-and-paraquat\/","title":{"rendered":"Restore Fertilizers and lift the ban on the pesticides: Glyphosate and Paraquat."},"content":{"rendered":"

By Chandre Dharnawardana, Canada.<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

Paraquate was an excellent\u00a0 herbicide which was banned by a previous government mainly because farmers who went bankrupt due to\u00a0 government rice policies used paraquat\u00a0 to commit\u00a0 suicide! Gyphosate was the other popular herbicide\u00a0 banned in 2015, ensuring that the farmer and even the wealthy tea planter should commit suicide. Pethiyagoda, a long-time doyen of the tea industry has resigned, possibly in total disgust. At last, the minster of agriculture, finally sensing disaster and bowing to scientific evidence on the safety of glyphoate has presented a cabinet paper to lift the ban on glyphosate. Paraquat too should be immediately re-approved with its availability restricted\u00a0 to technically proficient companies who can be hired by individuals desiring to use paraquat.<\/p>\n

As a Professor of Chemistry and University President\u00a0 who in a small way\u00a0 pioneered environmental science and food technology in the 1970s at the J’pura university, and as a supporter of scientific agriculture, I wish the Minister success in re-approving not only glyphosate, but paraquat as well.<\/p>\n

The tea industry has been loosing some 6 billion per annum, while its multiplier effect drives the loss\u00a0\u00a0 since 2015 close to 30 billion. Carefully crafted propaganda claiming a Kapra Beetle\u201d further hurt the industry. Meanwhile, the\u00a0 eco-pundits who got asbestos banned point to the tea monoculture and its soil, and call for closing the estates. Other\u00a0 eco-pundits and masters of the Toxin-Free Nation claim that paddy is ecological unsustainable, using up water and eroding the soil and push to convert the paddy fields into natural\u201d wet lands and marshes.\u00a0 Rice and flour are\u00a0 increasingly imported\u00a0 by the government, while\u00a0 downgrading\u00a0 its fertilizer subsidy schemes. Farmers are told\u00a0 to make their own organic fertilizer\u201d or buy the\u00a0 bio-film\u201d sponsored by the Presidential secretariat, but now alleged to be a scam.<\/p>\n

The farmer has to control weeds and pests. Glyphosate was banned at the behest of the JHU politicians who abandoned Rajapaksa. Venerable Ratana and followers and\u00a0 God-Natha psychics had already committed the Rajapaksa government to\u00a0 ban Glyphosate. The herbicide has a safe track record of over four\u00a0 decades in all advanced farming countries, with some countries using almost a thousand times Sri Lanka’s\u00a0 annual usage per hectare of agrochemicals and pesticides (world-bank data).\u00a0 Nevertheless, large amounts of fake research\u201d news against these pesticides reside in the internet.\u00a0 Individuals selling their products claiming to detoxify\u201d and rejuvenate\u201d clients\u00a0 sell\u00a0 alternative diets\u00a0 to save the earth, save the environment, and fight agro-business\u201d. Even the GMOA has fallen for this, and some medics\u00a0 are undoubtedly avid readers of questionable Internet Gurus\u201d like Dr. Mercola or Dr. Stephanie Seneff. The latter has spun theories proving the toxicity of glyphosate\u201d\u00a0 and sells a program that guarantees a life span of 110 years (free of glyphosate!) if you adhere to it, for a fee.<\/p>\n

Dr. Mercola spread the claim that CKDu is caused by a glyphosate-arsenic-hardwater complex that was hypothesized\u00a0 by Dr. Jayasumana and\u00a0 authored (in a little-known pay and publish\u00a0 journal\u201d) jointly with a medium\u201d claiming psychic powers linking her to God Natha.\u00a0 This substance imagined in 2014 has not been found by any one including Dr. Jayasumana who busies himself in electioneering.\u00a0 But many militants of the\u00a0 GMOA believe that Dr. Jayasumana and associates have proved\u201d that CKDu in the Rajarata is caused by this imagined glyphosate complex, although the WHO team who studied CKDu patients found no evidence for glyphosate in their biopsies. Even though glyphosate is absent from the arena of the crime, they still want it banned as a precaution\u201d !<\/p>\n

The force that propelled\u00a0 the ban is the public fear of chemicals\u201d that has been cleverly fanned\u00a0 by the local elite who\u00a0 ape the elite of California and Europe. The poor suffer their hunger while the rich search for clean food\u201d. Surely\u00a0 you cannot go wrong by eating clean food\u201d. This simple motherhood and apple pie\u201d statement is linked to the claim that natural\u201d food, unaffected by chemicals\u201d must be clean. This is then equated to organic food\u201d, while organic food\u201d is\u00a0 a movement initiated by the proto-Nazi\u00a0 Dr Rudolf Steiner who talked of a\u00a0 spiritual and biodynamic\u201d foundation for food.\u00a0 Steiner founded Anthroposophy\u201d, a sort of mystical hodge-podge\u00a0 claiming that\u00a0 the human race is evolving\u201d through the different races, with black people\u00a0 at childhood\u201d, Asians degenerate\u201d and white Europeans the most civilized. He envisaged a world where the population was limited to an elite with the lebensraum and resources to grow natural biodynamic food\u201d\u00a0 called\u00a0 organic food\u201d. This movement linked nicely with the misguided Eugenics movement in pre-Nazi\u00a0 Europe and became a successful\u00a0 bio-foods\u201d business.<\/p>\n

In countries like Sri Lanka,\u00a0 the elite internationalist\u201d upper classes (who unconsciously equate themselves with the white masters of colonial times) and the nationalists resonate together on organic food\u201d.\u00a0 Nationalists claim that\u00a0 traditional agriculture\u201d made Sri Lanka\u00a0 the granary of the East\u201d and identify with organic food\u201d.\u00a0 Multinational food businesses with supermarket chains like Whole Foods\u201d capitalize on the public belief in\u00a0 organic food\u201d. That only\u00a0 about 2% of the world’s food supply is organic\u201d, and the\u00a0 impossibility of bridging the remaining 98% are ignored. The\u00a0 enormous success of insecticides like DDT in saving human lives, and in opening up previously inhabitable regions for habitation have been turned topsy-turvy by emphasizing\u00a0 the dangers of excessive use.\u00a0 The clarion call of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring\u201d was\u00a0 weaponized by the organic food movement, with baseless attacks on the Green Revolution which saved India from mass famine, in the nick of time. A Rudolf Steiner could lament that if not for the green revolution the world would have two billion fewer brown-skins.\u00a0 Although industrial fertilizers and Urea came into being in the early part of the 20th century, these activists consider it\u00a0 a Western plot\u201d to use up the excess Nitrogen explosives of the 2nd world war!<\/p>\n

These attacks of the elitist white supremacists found strange bedfellows with the anti-establishment left in attacking\u00a0 giant agro-business. As many of these are based in USA and Europe, the attack on industrial agriculture\u201d became a part of the cold war.\u00a0 Fake news snippets against glyphosate are routinely posted by Russian agencies when ever Glyphosate comes for review by the EU parliament. Such news gets circulated on the internet by unsuspecting natural foods\u201d zealots. Even today, when Glyphosate was mentioned in the Sri Lankan parliament, Mr. Dinesh Gunawardena, a scion of Sri Lanka’s Communist party unhesitatingly linked it with American capitalism, while Ven. Ratana claimed that a man from America\u201d has come to Sri Lanka to agitate against the glyphosate ban imposed by Sri Lanka in 2015. Ironically, President Sirisena’s victory is also allegedly a triumph of American machinations in the murky waters of Sri Lankan politics!<\/p>\n

Given this political backdrop, the ban on glyphosate was effectively based on pseudo-science and political propaganda. Venerable Ratana became a credulous victim of the God Natha\u00a0 group and\u00a0 campaigned that\u00a0 fertilizers were laced with arsenic and cadmium. They took samples abroad for analysis but did not do elementary arithmetic to estimate how the toxins\u201d get diluted in the soil.\u00a0 Yellow-robed\u00a0\u00a0 demonstrators at the Fort railway station\u00a0 took the message to the country. A canard claimed that\u00a0 glyphosate sold to third-world countries\u201d are substandard\u201d. Prophets of doom came on television falsely claiming affiliations with the London University, UK and predicted Sri Lanka’s toxification from cadmium due to agrochemical use. Gunadasa Amarasekra, Ven. Ben Nalaka\u00a0 and other\u00a0 nationalists needed no facts or evidence\u201d to support banning pesticides and calling for\u00a0 compost instead of\u00a0 fertilizers laced with toxins\u201d.\u00a0 Peer-reviewed science is lame against such forces.<\/p>\n

In reality, the fertilizer standards of\u00a0 Sri Lanka are at least an order of magnitude stiffer\u00a0 than those of most countries. Repeated analyses of the soil, water and food\u00a0 show that Lankan rice is quite safe to eat, and that the waters of Rajarata rivers and tanks are safe to drink.\u00a0\u00a0 The latest study was\u00a0 by the J’pura University Professor Kamani Wanigasuriya and\u00a0 the University of North Carolina. Those who get CKDu drink water stagnating in their private wells. Laboratory mice fed such water also get kidney disease. However,\u00a0 in the short term it is politically hip to attack Monsanto, claim a land\u00a0 full of toxins, demand\u00a0\u00a0 closing unsustainable\u201d\u00a0 tea and paddy plantations, get to\u00a0 import rice,\u00a0 tea, etc.,\u00a0\u00a0 and\u00a0 collect\u00a0 the commissions<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Chandre Dharnawardana, Canada. Paraquate was an excellent\u00a0 herbicide which was banned by a previous government mainly because farmers who went bankrupt due to\u00a0 government rice policies used paraquat\u00a0 to commit\u00a0 suicide! Gyphosate was the other popular herbicide\u00a0 banned in 2015, ensuring that the farmer and even the wealthy tea planter should commit suicide. Pethiyagoda, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[85],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chandre-dharmawardana"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76004"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76004\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}